Seventh Month's Child
by AngelMorph
Summary: Two centuries after canon, a Dark Lord rules the world and one lonely mother awaits a child born in the seventh month. Years later a second child is born. Please R&R.
1. A child dies

A dark haired woman huddled in a corner of her rundown apartment. She was a young woman but already she was weighed down by the burdens of the world. The father of the child she now carried had been slain earlier that month. He had done nothing to deserve it. Rather, he had simply been randomly selected by the Dark Lord as a play-thing. It was an honour really, to be chosen to give the Lord pleasure, to satisfy the Lord's desire for torture and destruction. It was an honour. She should feel honoured to be carrying the child of a chosen. But she didn't. 

_In the hall, the clock struck ten._ She felt scared and alone. And the baby was late. It should have been born safely in the middle of the month but the days had passed agonizingly slow and the baby had not come. Now the end of the month approached. There were only a few hours left before the start of the seventh month. If the baby didn't come soon she would lose it too. 

The baby would die, like its father. Then she would be completely alone. Why didn't the child just come? 

Why would it have to die? She knew only that decree proclaimed that no child be born during the seventh month. She had asked her Master once why it was so. He hadn't known. "Our Lord had his reasons," he had replied. "He is the only one who knows. He is the only one who needs to know." She hadn't asked again but she had heard rumours. Rumours spread by her fellow muggles. Rumours that the Lord was afraid. Afraid because someone born in the seventh month was destined to kill him.

She had disregarded the rumours. The Lord was not afraid. He was never afraid. Nothing could hurt him, the oldest human being alive. Nothing, especially not the child of a lowly muggle. The Lord had lived for centuries and he was powerful. Even all the masters combined could not harm him.  He has made sure of that.

_In the hall, the clock struck eleven._ If her baby did not come soon it would die. How would it die? She didn't know. As a lowly muggle, she did not comprehend the workings of magic, not even the magic of her Master. The magic of the Lord was even stronger and far more mystifying. All she knew was that all babies born in the seventh month were born stillborn. 

She still remembered her brother's birth when she had been seven. It was during the seventh month. She had asked her mother why the baby didn't cry as her neighbour's child had done at birth. A sad look had crossed her mother's face.  "It is the seventh month," she had answered, as if the simple statement explained everything, "The children of the seventh month do not cry, they die. Remember that.  Don't ever forget." She had remembered. It was the last lesson her mother had taught her before passing away of grief, leaving her, an orphan, to take her place in her Master's service.

She had grown but still she remembered.  The ten years that had passed since her mother's death had stripped away her innocence.  She knew her place; below the Masters her faithfully served the Lord.  She knew of death and torture and horror.  She had been touched by it.  She had witnessed it.  

Now she awaited her own child. Her own child, that would not cry, but die.  And there was nothing she could do to stop it.

_In the hall, the clock stroke midnight._ Moments later a baby was born but no wail was heard. The infant did not draw a breath. It was dead. 

And all this because of a prophecy. A prophesy that had been spoken the night Harry Potter vanquished Lord Voldemort.  A prophecy that only one remembered:

_A new cycle has begun…The Dark Lord has fallen _

_But his vanquisher shall rise in his place_

_And the prophesy of the seventh month repeats._

_The New Lord will die at the hands of the_

_Seventh month's child. The new cycle has begun…_

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**Author's Note**: This is just some crazy idea that popped into my head. It's a stand-alone piece and have no plans for a sequel, or prequel, or anything of the sort. Oh, and for those of you that haven't figured it out: Dark Lord = Harry Potter, Master = wizard, and muggles are at the bottom of the hierarchy.


	2. The one with the power

**_The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…_**

_Born to those who have thrice defied him…_

The anguish of loosing her firstborn, so soon after the death of her spouse and the absurdity of the manner in which the child was snatched from her had drawn her to a group with which she would never have otherwise associated.  They too had lost children to the seventh month.  They too wanted answers.  And they found them.  They acquired a copy of the two hundred year old prophesy that the Lord had ordered destroyed.  How they had managed the feat she didn't know.  Her position in their hierarchy was not one to make her privy to such knowledge.  But she knew the prophesy, that much she knew…

There were other things she knew as well, things that were normally kept secret from muggles.  Things many Masters didn't even know, like the reason all children displaying sign of magic were given the mark of magic immediately upon discovery.  Like the reason  why the combined magic of all the world's Masters could not defeat the Lord.  These things she knew.

There were things she did as well.  Little acts of rebellion that would result in her death were they ever discovered.  She hadn't done much yet.  It had taken courage to entrench herself more deeply into the group than the outer layer.  No she hadn't done much yet. By the time her child was born in June she had only acted out trice.

_Born as the seventh month dies…_

When the child arrived on Tuesday, the sixth day of June, in the year of Lord Potter two hundred, he was early.  More than a month early, in fact.  When he had been conceived on the seventh of November the previous year she had been horror struck to discover that he was due at the end of July.  She had hoped against all hope that he would hold out an extra day and survive to be born at the start of August.  

Already she had lost a child to the seventh month.  She couldn't have borne to loose another.  It didn't help that she now knew the reason the Lord would not allow children born in July to survive.  It didn't help that she now knew that those very children were the Lord's greatest fear, his greatest weakness and that that was why he eliminated them.  No it didn't help at all.

When her child was born, when his voice cried out as he was born, she rejoiced.  She did not worry about the fact that he was premature.  Her limited knowledge of the world didn't include the knowledge that early babies might have health problems.  Health problems were for the medical Master to take care of.  

The significance of the birth date, one day short of eight months after it was conceived, did not occur  to her.  All she knew was that her baby was alive.  It was alive because it hadn't been born in July.

_And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal…_

The child was brought into the presence of the Lord on Marking Day that year, the one day of the year that muggles other than those chosen from torture were allowed in the Lord's presence.   That day he received his number with all the other children born that year and to whom the Lord gave permission to live.  Others children were not so lucky, those that chose to cry in the presence of the Lord, those he found to be unsightly, those he thought too weak to be of use, those whose parents displeased him.  All those died but her child lived and was marked 6 784 769 874.

There was no escaping the tattooed number that everyone, be they muggle or Master, was marked with.  It was through those numbers that the Lord kept track of all of his subjects and it was using them that he randomly selected those people he would torture and kill when he became bored.  Those numbers which symbolized enslavement and submission to the Lord.

_But he will have power the Dark Lord knows not…_

The child showed his first signs of magic at age one.   Had such a things happened before she had joined with others like herself and learned what she did, she would have gone straight to her Master with the news so he could receive the mark of magic and train to be a Master.  She would never have denied him the chance to rise a rung on the hierarchy of the world had she not known the powers of the mark of magic, the way in which it restricted a person's magic.

The mark of magic connected directly through the Lord.  Through it he could draw on the restricted magic of a witch or wizard, granting him even more power than he normally had.  Through it, he could access the mind of it wearer, read their mind, see through their eyes or possess their body.  Through it he could instantly kill it wearer on a whim or if he felt threatened without even calling them to his presence.

  All this she knew and it was for this reason that she chose to keep her son's magic secret, despite the potential penalties.  For this reason the Lord was never told of his powers.

_And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives …the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies _…

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**Author's Note**: Okay so I lied.  I wasn't planning to write any more in this universe but this little plot bunny insisted on being written.  The idea came about when one of my reviewers (don't check the review archives she reviewed in person) complained that the child in the first chapter had died.  Apparently she was hoping for the prophesied child to be born.  Unfortunately not only would that have been horribly cliché, but the safeguards put into place by Lord Potter made it such that a live birth would have been impossible.  As such, I tried to think of a way for the prophesy to be fulfilled.  After all, the fates cannot be escaped.  This chapter is the result.  Hope you enjoyed it.  Please review.


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